You are reading

Op-Ed: In Honor of Earth Day, Let’s Fight for Municipal Composting

District 29 City Council Candidate Aleda Gagarin at Forest Park (Photo Provided By Aleda For Council)

April 22, 2021 Op-Ed By Aleda Gagarin

I worry now more than ever about my children growing up on an uninhabitable planet. The science is loud and clear that we need to act urgently.

If I were in City Council now, during these final months of budget negotiations, I would fight to restore and expand funding to municipal composting, and work to make composting mandatory.

New York City is one of the most wasteful cities in the world. generating nearly four million tons of trash each year—a third of which is organic matter. Making composting mandatory is a clear policy remedy.

The most obvious argument for mandatory composting is the urgency of the climate crisis. Rerouting 80 percent of NYC’s organic matter from the waste stream would cut methane emissions equal to four billion pounds of CO2 every year, or the equivalent of removing 400,000 cars from the road.

There is an environmental justice aspect to this as well. In NYC, the majority of our trash is processed in working class communities of color. Historically, just three neighborhoods—the South Bronx, North Brooklyn and Southeast Queens—have processed over 75 percent of NYC’s waste.

Aleda Gagarin aledaforcouncil.com

Recent legislation has begun to amend these inequities. Removing a third of NYC’s waste from our frontline communities would further the movement for waste equity.

Municipal composting also makes financial sense. Last year, we spent $409 million shipping our trash to landfills as far away as South Carolina and Kentucky. This is costly, inefficient, and misses the opportunity to use organic matter as a revenue-generating resource.

While expanding composting city-wide requires an upfront investment, at the end of the day the less we send to landfills, the more money we save.

Last year, New York almost entirely defunded our municipal composting operation. At its height, our voluntary compost program reached 3.3 million people, yet we were only diverting 4 percent of our organic waste from landfills.

When participation is that low, it’s hard to justify sending trucks out that are returning nearly empty. The best way to truly expand composting, and set it up for success, is by making it mandatory.

Recycling has been mandatory in NYC since 1989, so this isn’t a particularly controversial proposal. Really it would just mean separating our garbage into four categories instead of three. San Francisco made composting mandatory in 2009, and now they divert 80 percent of their waste from landfills. By comparison, NYC diverts an embarrassing 17 percent.

If we are to truly live up to the climate goals this moment requires, we must do better. Time is running out. Passing mandatory municipal composting is an obvious place to start.

District 29 Council Candidate Aleda Gagarin at a community clean-up. (Photo Provided By Aleda For Council)

*Aleda Gagarin is a mother, non-profit leader, community activist and City Council candidate running in the 29th district in Queens to represent Forest Hills, Kew Gardens, Rego Park and Richmond Hill.

email the author: news@queenspost.com
No comments yet

Leave a Comment
Reply to this Comment

All comments are subject to moderation before being posted.

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Recent News

Repeat hate crime offender charged in anti-Muslim subway attack in Forest Hills: DA

A Southeast Queens man is being held without bail after he was criminally charged with assault in the first degree as a hate crime and other charges for allegedly punching and kicking a Muslim woman on an E train in Forest Hills during the early morning hours of Wednesday, June 18.

Naved Durrni, 34, of 106th Avenue in Jamaica, was arraigned in Queens Criminal Court on Thursday and additionally charged with aggravated harassment in the first and second degrees.

Hate Crimes Task Force investigating bomb threats against Mamdani: NYPD

The NYPD’s Hate Crimes Task Force launched a probe into multiple death threats made against Assembly Member Zohran Mamdani after his district office at 24-08 32nd St. in Astoria received four expletive-filled phone voicemails, on various dates, making threatening anti-Muslim statements by an unknown individual, including a threat to blow up his car.

The calls were made from an untraceable number and labeled the mayoral candidate a “terrorist who is not welcome in New York or America” in a message phoned in on Wednesday morning.

Seven teens indicted for attempted murder in brutal Kissena Park gang attack on two girls: DA

A Queens grand jury indicted seven teenagers for attempted murder, gang assault, robbery, and other crimes for an attack on two girls inside Kissena Park in Flushing in early May.

The defendants, who are all 17 years old, were variously arraigned in Queens Supreme Court between June 4 and Wednesday in two separate 25-count indictments with two counts of attempted murder in the second degree. If convicted, they face up to 25 years in prison.

Queens Defenders founder charged with stealing nonprofit funds as second scandal unfolds

The founder of the Queens Defenders and her husband have lawyered up after they were indicted by a federal grand jury for allegedly stealing tens of thousands of dollars from the non-profit organization.

Former Queens Defenders executive director Lori Zeno, 64, surrendered Wednesday at the Brooklyn federal courthouse. Zeno was arraigned on an indictment charging her and Rashad Ruhani, 55, with wire fraud conspiracy, theft, money laundering conspiracy and other crimes.